California Elections / STATE OFFICES : Lungren, Fong Buoyed by GOP ‘Tidal Wave’ : Republicans lead in all but one partisan contest, in which Controller Gray Davis claims victory in race for lieutenant governor. Quackenbush, Jones, McClintock slightly ahead

A Republican tidal wave sweeping across the nation spared at least one Democrat in partisan statewide races in California, although others were locked in contests too close to call late Tuesday.

The only Democrat able to claim victory based on partial returns was state Controller Gray Davis in his race for lieutenant governor against state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley).

However, acting Secretary of State Tony Miller, a Democrat, was just points behind Republican Assemblyman Bill Jones in his race to retain that office. Democratic businesswoman Kathleen Connell was closing in on former GOP Assemblyman Tom McClintock, the early leader in the race for controller.

Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren easily succeeded in his bid for reelection over his Democratic challenger, Assemblyman Tom Umberg of Garden Grove.

Among other Republicans riding the tide were Matt Fong, who held a firm lead over former state Democratic Party chairman Phil Angelides in incomplete results for treasurer, and Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush of Cupertino, who was leading state Sen. Art Torres of Los Angeles in the race for insurance commissioner.

In the lone nonpartisan race, Democrat Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin of Fremont held a commanding lead over Maureen DiMarco, a Democrat working as Republican Pete Wilson’s secretary of child development and education and who had the backing of her boss.

The attorney general’s race was a particularly vitriolic contest between Lungren, the conservative crown prince of California Republican politics, and Umberg, a champion of the new Democrats out to prove he could be even tougher on crime than the GOP incumbent.

Umberg did not immediately concede defeat but acknowledged that there “is a tidal wave out there against the Democrats and the wave is crashing.”

Lungren attributed his victory in part to voters’ revulsion over a television commercial in which his opponent attempted to link the murder of Polly Klaas to the attorney general’s failure to adopt a computerized system for tracking parolees.

In a speech to supporters in Los Angeles, the attorney general called the Klaas commercial “the single worst campaign ad this season and some say of any season . . . I wanted to rely on the intelligence of the people of California to reject it. And they did.”

His bid for statewide office lost, Umberg was assigning his defeat to the juggernaut that rolled over Democrats throughout California and the nation.

“The wave was out there building against the Democrats, and it came crashing down,” Umberg said from his election-night headquarters at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers hotel.

The former prosecutor, referring to the controversial Klass campaign adverstisements attacking the incumbent, said he didn’t know whether he should have run the race any differently.

“We had to make a big splash,” Umberg said of his unsuccessful media strategy.

Lungren went into the race with a decided edge in crime-fighting machismo. He was the attorney general who had frantically beaten back last-minute appeals intended to stop the execution of murderer Robert Alton Harris--the first person killed in the San Quentin gas chamber in 25 years.

As the underdog, Umberg, a former prosecutor, gambled on the television ad that attempted to do what might have seemed impossible before the race--tag his opponent as soft on crime. Lungren denounced the commercial as flat-out wrong, even before it began running. Later, he criticized Umberg for taking more than $800,000 in campaign contributions from Indian tribes that were battling the attorney general over reservation gambling.

Among other statewide races, seasoned campaigner and fund-raiser Davis clashed for lieutenant governor with little-known and poorly funded Wright. In sharp contrast to Wright, Davis is a known quantity to the state’s voters. He was Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.’s chief of staff and an assemblyman before being twice elected controller.

Speaking of his fellow Democrats, Davis said: “We have to look in the mirror and understand the need for public safety” and a good business climate in the state.

In her campaign, Wright tried to raise ethical questions, issuing a booklet titled “Gray’s Anatomy” that resurrected charges that Davis had used state resources to help in a political campaign. But with a commanding lead in public opinion polls, Davis generally took the high road, emphasizing his role, for example, in persuading Taco Bell Corp. to stay in California.

Staunch conservative Wright was elected to the state Senate two years ago after a 12-year career in the Assembly. She is a former mayor of Simi Valley and was making her first bid for statewide office.

How the candidates raised campaign money became a major issue in the race for insurance commissioner. Quackenbush took most of his campaign cash from the insurance industry--sparking Torres’ charges that he would be beholden to the companies that he would regulate as commissioner. But Quackenbush countered with ads that attacked Torres for taking contributions from industry-tainted sources, even though the Democrat had refused contributions from the companies themselves.

The two candidates differed over implementing Proposition 103, the 1988 initiative that promised to hold the line on insurance rates. Torres promised to keep in place regulations written by incumbent Commissioner John Garamendi to limit rate increases. Quackenbush argued that less regulation would improve competition.

In the hard-fought race for superintendent of public instruction, the only nonpartisan statewide post on the ballot, voters had a choice between two members of the state’s education Establishment. DiMarco vied with Eastin, chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, to become the first woman to hold the office since its creation in 1849.

Eastin and DiMarco agreed on many issues. They based their campaigns largely on touting their backgrounds and qualifications to lead the state’s $29-billion, 5.2-million-student public education system. DiMarco cited her 23 years of varied experience, from volunteer in her children’s classrooms to local board member and consultant to the state superintendent before accepting Wilson’s job offer in 1991. Eastin cited her community college teaching experience, private-industry management job and experience in the Legislature since 1986.

In the high-spending race for treasurer, Angelides, a Sacramento land developer, faced off against Republican Fong, the son of former Secretary of State March Fong Eu and a member of the State Board of Equalization.

Fong, a lawyer, campaigned on a plan for slashing state government spending $2.2 million, which includes many of the reductions called for by Wilson. On the equalization board, he negotiated a money-saving court settlement and consolidated Los Angeles County offices to cut costs. But his leasing of office space from developers who provided him free campaign headquarters provided ammunition for Angelides’ aggressive attack-style campaigning.

Angelides, who got his start in politics working for then-Gov. Jerry Brown, promised to turn down requests from the governor and Legislature if they seek the treasurer’s permission for more state debt.

In his effort to become secretary of state and California’s top elections officer, Jones ran as one of the principal authors of “three strikes,” the lock-’em-up measure that increased penalties for repeat criminals. The veteran lawmaker faced Miller, who had served as legal counsel and chief deputy to the previous occupant of the office, Eu.